Today I am beginning my first day of my Sophomore year of college. It seems kind of odd that I am already here, and I am over halfway to receiving the first of my college degrees. I will give you a somewhat detailed recap of my first day, so you can have a better idea of how things will be for me this semester. (Note: I will be writing this in various stages throughout the day, so if my wording seems a bit odd, that is why.)
0830: I am fully ready for my day to begin. I am dressed, my hair is fixed, and I have eaten breakfast, so I guess that I am as ready as I can be! Last night, on a whim, I decided to buy a coffee maker, so I have also had a small pot of coffee already...maybe that's why I'm so awake! (I think that if given the chance, I will become an avid coffee drinker like many members of my family...) Although it would seem as though this is the most ideal first day one could ask for, it isn't quite that, because of what happened about one week ago.
Last week, when I started my move-in process, which I already wasn't excited about, I decided to go take care of all of my administrative tasks (i.e. parking permit, ID renewal, book purchases, etc.) Things were going seemingly alright until I got to the bookstore to get my books. Because of my scholarship, this is usually a stress-free process, but that was not the case this go-round. I was told that I had to go on the student website to accept my financial aid package, a process that was rumored to take only "a couple of minutes". Because I didn't have my computer with me, I went over to Tevis's house to use his computer. When I went through the entire process, I came to find out that I have no financial aid awards. This is a problem. I proceeded to call the financial aid office, and I was told, quite rudely, that I would NOT have any money coming my way until I filed a FAFSA...something that we didn't have to do last year, but is apparently a new requirement that no one bothered to tell any of us. (Can you sense my frustration yet?) I put in a few more calls to make sure that that was what I had to do, and then, with the weight of everything that had already happened, I started bawling like a baby. Not exactly what I wanted to happen in front of my boyfriend and his family, but thankfully, they were very comforting! So, I spent that night filing my FAFSA. The one blessing of the whole situation is the fact that this is now in a digital format, which really did speed up the whole process. Also, I was able to pull almost all of my parents' tax info from the IRS website, thanks to the IRS extraction feature. Fast-forward to today, I am still waiting for my money to come through, I have no books, and I am just about fit to be tied because I HATE feeling unprepared.
Now, I will be obsessively checking my student account, and possibly visiting the lovely (sarcasm) financial aid people to see where my money is (I always hoped I wouldn't be one of those people, but now that I am in that boat; I fear that that is who I have become...oops!). My first class isn't really until 1000, but because of my position as an assistant, I will be going in at 900 to help my boss.
0900-1200: I started off by heading over to my boss's office, where I was tasked with making a few copies for her. This went fine besides the fact that I had to use the other, not-so-fancypants copier that doesn't have as many cool features because the "good" copier is currently on the fritz. Nothing too exciting there...just saying.
Physics I was at 1000, and I have high hopes for this class, especially since my wonderful boss is teaching it. Of course, we went over standard syllabus mumbo-jumbo, and we started going over a few topics (significant figures...aka "sig figs", to be exact). I have lab later today, so that should be interesting. Also, once we got into the class, we realized that half the class was in the wrong room because they switched the rooms for General Biology & Physics. I will say that there were about ten very happy people who left that room for Biology! I know lots of people in this class, so I'm not too worried about finding someone if we want to do a study group. I feel alright about Physics!
Calc II was at 1100. I will reiterate my feelings on this for you in case you forgot: I cannot understand the rationale behind the school thinking that it is okay to offer an upper math class via ITV. It is NOT okay! Material-wise, I think that I'll be golden for the meantime, but otherwise, I kind of feel like us Enidites are the red-headed stepchildren in this situation. Our teacher seems fairly nice, although she has the "gruffness" necessary for any successful math professor. Hopefully she will be responsive to phone calls/email, since that is one of our only means of communication. Oh yeah, just as an added FYI, this class meets five days/week, so it is like high school revisited. This will be good for material retention, but this is bad on the homework/burnout front. Calc II will be my life this semester...yay :( I have to keep reminding myself that I made it through Calc I unscathed, so this can't be much more terrible...I'll keep you posted.
I paid the financial aid people a visit, and thankfully I got to deal with the nice office assistant as opposed to the grumpy lady who yelled at me last week. She was very vague as to when my information would go through, but she said that it would be done as soon as they got my info processed. My thoughts are that she wanted to allow the office some leeway in the matter so that I wouldn't be pillaging their office in the event that it takes longer than expected. She had me fill out a form, which I think will expedite the process some (???). I was very polite and gracious, and not overly pushy, in hopes that that will help me in the long run...it might not, but it never hurts! I'm banking on Wednesday or Thursday to get my books, so here's hoping that that will happen!
1230: Around this time on Mondays, I will usually start my hours in the tutoring lab, but since it's the first day, it was pretty senseless to sit around for three hours waiting on nothing to happen. As an added (and totally random) note, I have greatly underestimated the power of a little caffeine in the morning! I should have tried this years ago, because I am feeling pretty peppy right now! I'm sure the crash won't be so great, but I'll figure that out as I go! :)
I think that I will have to go buy my Physics class note manual and lab manual outright. I have been told that it costs less than $10, so if I can't be reimbursed, I can live with that just so I have the added peace of mind of these absolutely necessary materials.
1400-1600: Yes, I bought the Physics papers. So I had to pay $11 for two booklets, but I feel a little better about that situation, so it was well worth it. Besides, I get to keep these at the end of the semester, so that is some consolation for the matter. After that, I went over to the science building and waited it out until lab started.
Once we got into lab, we were assigned tables by alphabetical order. Thank heavens I have a good lab group. Maybe it really is better to be assigned to a group than to just pick a group by random. Our lab today was fairly simple. We did a review of math problems, which was right up my alley! Truth be told, that lab was probably one of the better things to happen today! It felt so good to be back to solving math problems and helping others solve their math problems. That was probably one of the better ways to end my first phase of Day 1!
Stay tuned for tomorrow's update on my TR classes...I promise it will be much shorter!!!
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